4to; ‘Canonum pro inveniendis focis refractionum … demonstrationes geometricæ,’ Leyden, 1739; ‘Epistola ad Fabricium,’ Amsterdam, 1740, and ‘Demonstrationes de radiorum lucis … aberrationibus,’ Leyden, 1741.
Logan bequeathed his library of over two thousand volumes of classical authors, including the Greek mathematicians in folio, Fabricius's ‘Bibliothèque Grecque,’ and Newton's works, with an endowment, to the city of Philadelphia, and thirteen hundred volumes were added by his eldest son. An original portrait of him in this library is engraved by S. Allen in Armistead's ‘Memoirs,’ and a similar portrait appears in Appleton's ‘Cyclopædia of American Biography.’ His name was commemorated by Robert Brown in the genus Logania, the type of a large order of flowering plants (Nicholson, Dictionary of Gardening, ii. 292).
[Memoirs by Wilson Armistead, London, 1851, 12mo; Appleton's Cyclopædia of American Biography, iv. 3; Joseph Smith's Catalogue of Friends' Books, ii. 129.]
LOGAN, JAMES (1794?–1872), author of the ‘Scottish Gael,’ was born in Aberdeen about 1794, his father being a substantial merchant. He was educated at the grammar school and Marischal College, Aberdeen. He intended to become a lawyer, but a fracture of the skull, accidentally incurred while taking part in athletic sports, ruined his plans, and he took to drawing as a pastime. His friends urged him to persevere as an artist; he settled in London under the patronage of Lord Aberdeen, and studied in connection with the Royal Academy. Subsequently he became a journalist, and to help expenses acted for a time as clerk in an architect's office. Suddenly, however, about 1826, he started on a pedestrian tour over Scotland, gathering materials on Gaelic antiquities from the North Sea to the Atlantic. Returning to London he supported himself by periodical writing while he composed his ‘Scottish Gael, or Celtic Manners as preserved among the Highlanders,’ which was published in 1831 in 2 vols., with a dedication to William IV and illustrations by the author. He received one hundred guineas for the copyright, and the book, which was very favourably reviewed, sold well at thirty shillings—not, as Dr. Stewart states in his ‘Memoir,’ at fourteen guineas a copy.
Logan afterwards contributed to the ‘Gentleman's Magazine,’ in which he ably sustained a controversy with the Welsh scholar Dr. Davies on the respective merits of the Cymric and Gaelic branches of Celtic speech. This enhanced his reputation among scholars, bringing him a eulogistic letter from Lamartine and the offer of the secretaryship of the Highland Society of London, which he accepted and held for two or three years. Resigning this post, in accordance with his characteristic impatience of restraint, he trusted again for a living to miscellaneous literary work, contributing largely at the same time to the ‘Transactions’ of the Gaelic Society of London. He was generously patronised by the prince consort, who was interested in his special studies, and at length enabled him to become a brother of the Charterhouse, London. But Logan's restless and critical spirit led to his expulsion in 1866. Various members of the Highland and Celtic Societies befriended him, and his last years were comfortable and ostensibly independent. Logan died in London in April 1872.
The ‘Scottish Gael’ is scholarly, full, and vigorous; and, as edited by Dr. Alexander Stewart in 1876, with memoir and valuable notes, forms the standard authority on the characteristics, history, and literature of the Celt in Scotland. Logan also wrote the introduction to Mackenzie's ‘Sar-obair nam Bard Gaelach,’ or ‘Beauties of Gaelic Poetry’ (2 vols. 1841, new edit. 1877), and supplied adequate letterpress to MacIan's ‘Clans of the Scottish Highlands,’ an illustrated work on ‘Highland Costumes,’ 2 vols. fol. 1843–9; new edit. 1857.
[Dr. Stewart's Memoir in the Scottish Gael, 1876 ed.]
LOGAN, JAMES RICHARDSON (d. 1869), scientific writer, was bred to the law, and went out between 1830 and 1840 to the Straits Settlements, finally settling at Penang, Prince of Wales's Island. His ability at once gave him a leading position among the colonists, and he was able to render very great services to the then struggling settlement. It was he who, by an urgent demonstration of the facts, induced Lord Palmerston to resist the encroachments of the Dutch upon the west coast of Sumatra, and by a cogent ‘Petition’ to the Peninsular and Oriental Company prevailed upon that firm to maintain direct communication between Penang and this country. One of his last public services was the exposure in the ‘Penang Gazette’ of the dangerous methods of the secret societies which had for a long time been the bane of the Straits.
Logan's first important scientific publication was a paper ‘On the local and relative Geology of Singapore, including Notices of Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula, &c.,’ written in 1846, and printed in the ‘Journal of the
